Microsoft is putting $1.5 billion behind the marketing campaign for the release of Windows 8, enough to make even the Google behemoth nervous about losing access to your personal data. So they put this video together letting people know how to easily install the Google Chrome browser and make Google Search your default.

For those who still get a little hinky when Google says you hereby “Agree to our Terms of Service” when you click the “Install” button, here’s how you opt out of ad tracking cookies in Google Chrome:

And here’s a video on how to opt out of ads on search and gmail:

Google’s new privacy policy allows them to associate cookies with everything they know about you though things like your browsing history, gmail, Android usage, Google calendar, or any of their other applications.

They’re even selling your online identity to political campaigns and other advertisers who want to match it up with your offline identity based on things like your voting record, address, age, charitable contributions and other personal data.

The only exception is “sensitive” data about you, which they define as your “race, religion, sexual orientation or health.” Anything else is apparently fair game, so if you decide to “get your Google back,” make sure you control how they “get” you.

Hah! Windows 8. I already forgot more about 8 than many people will ever know.

So far as all the other stuff, well, I spent well over 2 hrs trying to get my SO’s computer to show bookmarks in Firefox. Finally had to determine on my own that there were two folders named similar but different in a place that I finally figured out should only have one. So I threw one out and got it to work.

Which one? That was a SWAG, but I guessed right.

I’m rather wary of anything I’m offered these days in software, starting with Win8.